I'm gonna say somewhere in between. Main reaction is the same one I had to Reilly's piece about guilting Tiger into meeting his siblings -- uneasy. it's great Reilly's daughter has had the experiences she did. Doesn't mean Kaepernick has to follow the same path. I think about my own family and someone writing a column about my relationship with, say, my sister. Who I get along with and love and would do just about anything for. But...we have issues. And never talk on the phone. And see each other about five days a year. How could I explain the complexities in an answer to a reporter's queries? How could a writer in 800 words explain why I should do something in a situation he, when you get down to it, doesn't know anything about. Feels too much like he's going for a Hallmark moment, and I picture Kaepernick agreeing to do it and then Reilly requesting if he can be there at the reunion as they relaunch the Homecoming series.

I don't know how Reilly could have written this without bringing his own daughter into it. It gives him credibility on this issue, it allows him to offer an opinion that otherwise would be quickly dismissed. However, I'm no fan of telling someone what to do with their personal life. Agree with Small Town Guy. What was good for Rae isn't necessarily good for Colin Kaepernick. Do I think he should call the lady up? Yeah, of course. But my opinion on this matters just as much as Reilly's — zilch.

What is it the poet said? Like muffled drums, our hearts beat a funeral march to the grave. And so it is that Bryant Gumbel, a man who is nothing if not prepared, keeps a list of his pallbearers.

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Alone in her bedroom, alone in a 40-room mansion, alone on a 70-acre estate, Marge Schott finishes off a vodka-and-water (no lime, no lemon), stubs out another Carlton 120, takes to her two aching knees and prays to the Men. To Charlie, the husband who made her life and then ruined it. He taught her never to trust. To Daddy, the unsmiling father who turned her into his only son. He taught her never to be soft. To Dad Schott, the calculating father-in-law, whom she may have loved most of all. He taught her never to let herself be cheated.

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Freshman Chadd Smith knows why he's hanging from his closet shelf by his fingers at three in the morning, with his legs bent and spread. It has to do with football. The Citadel hadn't lost the Wofford game since 1958. In fact, it had never lost the Wofford game at home. But tonight it did. As usual, somebody has to pay. As usual, it's the freshmen. That part he understands. What Smith wants to know is, What is it? What is that coldness I feel now and again down between my thighs?

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On a refrigerated, colorless Saturday morning in the no-McDonald's town of Walnut, Ill., Kenny Wilcoxen walked along the street carrying the letter he had waited for his whole life, the one that meant that after 20 years he was finally going to ref the state high school football finals. On the other side of the letter, written neatly in blue ink, was his suicide note.

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Somewhere between making TIME and the ABC World News Tonight and getting turned into the kind of cuddly American hero people want to hang from their rearview mirrors, Doug Flutie lost his baby.

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My mom always had a little crush on Dan Reeves. She liked his looks, loved his accent and admired how he always wore a coat and tie on the sideline during Denver Broncos games. "Doesn't he look so nice?" she'd gush. So when they both had quadruple-bypass heart surgery the same day five weeks ago, on Dec. 14, she felt as if they were in it together.

As an adoptive parent, I was stunned and revolted by Reilly's suggestion that Kaepernick has somehow made the wrong choice, that his attitude is "odd," that a hug with his birthmother could "fill two hearts."

You want to write about your daughter's successful reunion with her birthmother in Korea, write it. It's a beautiful story for your family. But to write is as an admonition of a young man who has chosen otherwise--because, you know, it's Super Bowl week and this is what we do--is arrogant beyond belief.

My beautiful daughter found and met her birthparents, with the full support of our family. Let me just say this: You don't know what's behind that door until it's been opened, and once opened, it cannot be easily closed. It's not a bad thing or a good thing, it's just a complexity that most people don't have to deal with. It's also a deeply personal and complicated emotional process to be navigated by a family, not by a sports columnist eager to share his personal experience, playing at pop psychology and inserting himself into a private issue that's apparently a non-issue to the Kaepernicks.